Don Horn

2008 Conference: Don Horn

Tinley Park, Illinois, “Pullman Photographers and Their Railroad Counterparts”

The Pullman Photographers and their contemporaries worked in a void somewhere between labor and management. For the most part, their names and history is lost with only a few credit lines or comments about them in employee publications, initials scratched into glass plate negatives or notes inscribed on the backs of old photographs. When they hired on, they were photographers for life until they either retired of passed away. Advancement out of the photographic department seemed to be denied by management. Yet no other person had more of an impact on their fellow employees, the documentation and growth of their companies or the marketing and sales of their product.